General Discussion

One of the worst systems to come out of Shadows of Isildur was the addition of the 'Power' system. It took what were already painfully imbalanced characters and made them utterly insane. Where RPP characters were novelty characters with more coded power to represent their stature in the mythos prior to it, they became coded gods afterwards. The difference between 0 RPP characters and the 3 RPP characters and up was massive. And there was no chance for the 0 RPP character to ever close that gap. They would always be extremely inferior.

I hope no such system emerges in this incarnation of SOI. The power system served only heavily entrenched interests in the game before. The average player was significantly marginalized by it even if they did not realize it.

And I would caution against any system, including RPP, that creates vast gulfs in power between characters right out of character creation.

What was really stupid was the fact that it was supposed to symbolize the character's leadership and strength of personality, something that should never be represented by a stat. I was vehemently against it and quit within a month of it being implemented. Never logged in again.

It was also randomized during chargen and a character could start with low or high power based on nothing other than sheer luck. I don't know the numerical range of the spread, but it was a variance of several categories. You could just get lucky and get a random, arbitrary dose of extremely powerful coded benefits for no reason whatsoever.

Luckily it doesn't seem that this will be in the game this time around. It's certainly not part of the ARPI code and they say they haven't changed anything related to combat.

Throttle wrote:It was also randomized during chargen and a character could start with low or high power based on nothing other than sheer luck. I don't know the numerical range of the spread, but it was a variance of several categories. You could just get lucky and get a random, arbitrary dose of extremely powerful coded benefits for no reason whatsoever.

From what I can remember, a standard human had a variance of 1-6. It could have been 1-8. Dwarves, Elves, Dunedain, and such had minimums of something like 25, 30, 15 respectively and then they still had the chance to roll higher than that. Each point was worth 2 or 3 hitpoints, I believe. It also increased your skill point maximum, but I cannot remember the formula. I am not sure if it had an effect on endurance or not. It has been too long for me to remember. And then on top of those big bonuses those races still had all the bonuses they had before power. Extreme endurance, high stat bonuses (Elves had something like 10+ in extra stat increases), etc.

The difference was utterly massive, suffice to say. It was a real disservice to your average player.

I think power could have been a great thing had it been used to empower the average person. With the way game was coded and characters were handled, the sum of your character's abilities was defined from the very beginning. You could never become more than what your original statistics allowed. Had power been introduced to allow people to exceed that based upon what they had done in the game, such as being attached to roles, it could have really done a lot to create epic figures. And it would have been more accessible to the average person.

From what I remember, it was loosely attached to roles within the game. I cannot quite recall how that worked, though. Still, that part was a very good idea. It was everything else about it that sucked. And I would not be opposed to a system like power that let the average person exceed their original statistics through in-game work. That's still open for abuse; however, I think the potential for abuse versus the potential for good is such that it would ultimately be a good thing.

Also, here's how it all worked. So I misremembered things, but hey, oh well!

This topic brought up another question with me. Will aura be making a come back in any way? I always felt it to be the stat that summed up the heart of the tolkien mud even if it fell a little short. Like what power attempted to do but went a little overboard.

It was a bad idea even as aura. If anything, I think aura/power/etc should be entirely decided by in-game factors. I loved the idea of having power associated with your roles in the game. It is a crude method of handling it, but it does make sense and it kind of allows for 'mythical' figures to arise within the game proper.

Aura as a stat just never really made much sense. You either chose to have aura, which served little function in the game for most people, and sacrificed primary stats or you chose primary stats and sacrificed aura. The logical choice was always to sacrifice aura because it was a dump stat.

I personally believe systems like these should be left out for now. Right now most people will be playing regular Joes in Laketown or maybe a goblin, people of an average condition.

Elves, Hobbits, Dwarves or more powerful playable creature types should have higher stats, not an aura stat or power stat that gives them statistically more power across the board. Base things of the average and set things so that more powerful races be more powerful via attributes, not a universal stat.

The problem with a lack of aura or power like system is that it's a huge part of Tolkien's world. A person's ability to withstand the forces of darkness is directly related to their inner nobility and power which comes from ancient bloodlines generally. If everyone is just "power"less then the orcs should sweep over them like a wave of death and terror.

The game does have stats and skills. It's not as though the lack of power/aura makes everyone completely identical. The individuals who were graced with "higher power" in the literature were heroes and royalty and such, far beyond the scope of PCs. It's not really something that should be represented by a randomized stat.

Zargen wrote:This topic brought up another question with me. Will aura be making a come back in any way? I always felt it to be the stat that summed up the heart of the tolkien mud even if it fell a little short. Like what power attempted to do but went a little overboard.

We've changed it to Presence. We agree with the assessment that some figures just can't help but be noticed. Even with his hood pulled up and in a corner booth of the pub, Arragorn's gaze was felt upon Frodo. Thorin Oakenshield stands out even among a dozen dwarves, and is picked out repeatedly from the crowd just based on his bearing. These individuals are good examples of Peak Presence.

As we incorporate music and tale-telling into the game, we decided that it was enough of a social dynamic in the code to justify a social aptitude stat to go with it. How someone uses their aptitude is still totally a matter of roleplay - it is not a charisma or persuasion stat - and can be actively used for good or for ill. The combat code portion is more akin to the idea of "threat generation" on other MMORPGs. Someone with more presence is more heard when giving group orders like retreat, and is able to interpose more easily when rescuing another by drawing attention on himself.

A coded reason for your screechy singing skills and deplorable lute playing skills is no different from the system in place with Parallel/Atonement. If your dexterity was terrible. Your ability to play the guitar was also terrible.

And thanks for that link Octavius. Never saw it before! Small thought on how Presence effects rescue/retreat. Could it also be used to effect the success/failure rate of Guard?

Or better yet, please, please, please remove the guard command from the game. Rescue is fine, but guard is ridiculous. The idea that you'll automatically be able to intercept anyone attacking any particular person, especially if you're already engaged in combat with someone seems silly to me. I like the idea of rescue more as it is you making an effort to move away from your current opponent to interpose between two others, but the automatic nature of guard doesn't work. If I recall correctly, it was almost always instantly successful, which rescue is not either.

At that rate, you might as well strip out willpower, too. I think it's fine to leave it in. Speaking of, hopefully that will eradicate the blurring of lines between aura and willpower where such things as affinity for and resistance to magic came in (see: magical crow trolls).

As for guard and rescue - guard is just auto-rescue, I think. It's never been noticeably more or less effective, in my experience, although it's possible that it bypasses balance checks when it shouldn't.